ornaments of learning and religion into holes and corners, now marched under episcopal banners; and having first crowded the prisons of England, emptied its whole vial of wrath on the miserable covenanters of Scotland. (Laing's History of Scotland.-Walter Scott's Bard's Ballads, &c.) A merciful Providence at length constrained both parties to join against a common enemy. A wise government followed; and the established church became, and now is, not only the brightest example, but our best and only sure bulwark, of toleration! The true and indispensable bank against a new inundation of persecuting zeal ESTO PERPETUA! found myself all afloat. Doubts rushed in; broke upon me "from the fountains of the great deep," and fell from the windows of heaven.” The fontal truths of natural religion, and the books of Revelation, alike contributed to the flood; and it was long ere my ark touched on an Ararat, and rested. The idea of the Supreme Being appeared to me to be as necessarily implied in all particular modes of being. as the idea of infinite space in all the geometrical figures by which space is limited. I was pleased with the Cartesian opinion, that the idea of God is distinguished from all other ideas by involving its reality; but I was not wholly satisfied. I began then to ask myself, what proof I had of the outward existence of any thing! Of this sheet of paper, for instance, as a thing, in itself, separate from the phenomena or image in my perception. I saw, that in the nature of things, such proof is impossible; and that of all modes of being, that are not objects of the senses, the existence is assumed by a logical necessity arising from the constitution of the mind itself, by the absence of all motive to doubt it, not from any absolute contradiction in the supposition of the contrary. Still, the existence of a being, the ground of all existence, was not yet the existence of a moral creator and governor. "In the position, that all reality is either contained in the necessary being as an attribute, or exists through him, as its ground, it remains undecided whether the properties of intelligence and will are to be referred to the Supreme Being in the former, or only in the latter sense; as inherent attributes, or only as consequences that have existence in other things through him. Thus, organ A long interval of quiet succeeded; or, rather, the exhaustion had produced a cold fit of the ague, which was symptomatized by indifference among the many, and a tendency to infidelity or scepticism in the educated classes. At length those feelings of disgust and hatred which, for a brief while, the multitude had attached to the crimes and absurdities of sectarian and democratic fanaticism, were transferred to the oppressive privileges of the noblesse, and the luxury, intrigues, and favoritism of the continental courts. The same principles, dressed in the ostentatious garb of a fashionable philosophy, once more rose triumphant, and effected the French revolution. And have we not, within the last three or four years, had reason to apprehend, that the detestable maxims and correspondent measures of the late French despotism had already bedimmed the public recollections of democratic frenzy; had drawn off, to other objects, the electric force of the feelings which had massed and upheld those recollections; and that a favorable concurrence of occasions was alone want-ization and motion are regarded as from God, not in ing to awaken the thunder, and precipitate the lightning, from the opposite quarter of the political heaven? (See THE FRIEND, p. 110.) In part from constitutional indolence, which, in the very hey-dey of hope, had kept my enthusiasm in check, but still more from the habits and influences of a classical education and academic pursuits, scarcely had a year elapsed from the commencement of my literary and political adventures, before my mind sunk into a state of thorough disgust and despondency, both with regard to the disputes and the parties disputant. With more than poetic feeling I exclaimed: "The sensual and the dark rebel in vain, And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves, The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of the waves!" I retired to a cottage in Somersetshire at the foot of Quantock, and devoted my thoughts and studies to the foundations of religion and morals. Here I God. Were the latter the truth, then, notwithstanding all the pre-eminence which must be assigned to the ETERNAL FIRST from the sufficiency, unity, and independence of his being, as the dread ground of the universe, his nature would yet fall far short of that which we are bound to comprehend in the idea of GOD. For without any knowledge or determining resolve of its own, it would only be a blind necessary ground of other things and other spirits; and thus would be distinguished from the FATE of certain ancient philosophers in no respect, but that of being more definitely and intelligibly described." KANT'S einzig moglicher Beweisgrund: vermischte Schriften, Zweiter Band, § 102 and 103. For a very long time, indeed, I could not reconcile personality with infinity; and my head was with Spinoza, though my whole heart remained with Paul and John. Yet there had dawned upon me, even before I had met with the Critique of the Pure Reason, a certain guiding light. If the mere intellect could make no certain discovery of a holy and intelligent first cause, it might yet supply a demonstration, that no legitimate argument could be drawn from the intellect against its truth. And what is this more than St. Paul's assertion, that by wisdom (more properly translated, by the powers of reasoning) no man ever arrived at the knowledge of God? What more than the sublimest, and, probably, the oldest book on earth, has taught us? I became convinced, that religion, as both the corner-stone and the key-stone of morality, must have a moral origin; so far at least, that the evidence of its doctrines could not, like the truths of abstract science, be wholly independent of the will. It were therefore to be expected, that its fundamental truth would be such as MIGHT be denied; though only by the fool, and even by the fool from the madness of the heart alone! The question then concerning our faith in the existence of a God, not only as the ground of the universe by his essence, but as its maker and judge by his wisdom and holy will, appeared to stand thus: The sciential reason, whose objects are purely theoretical, remains neutral, as long as its name and semblance are not usurped by the opponents of the doctrine. But it then becomes an effective ally by exposing the false show of demonstration, or by evincing the equal demonstrability of the contrary from premises equally logical. The understanding mean time suggests, the analogy of experience facilitates, the belief. Nature excites and recalls it, as by a perpetual revelation. Our feelings almost necessitate it; and the law of conscience peremptorily commands it. The arguments, that at all apply to it, are in its favor; and there is nothing against it, but its own sublimity It could not be intellectually more evident without becoming morally less effective; without counteracting its own end, by sacrificing the life of faith to the cold mechanism of a worthless, because compulsory assent. The belief of a God and a future state (if passive acquiescence may be flattered with the name of belief) does not indeed always beget a good heart; but a good heart so naturally begets the belief, that the very few exceptions must be regarded as strange anomalies from strange and unfortunate circumstances. From these premises I proceed to draw the following conclusions: First, that having once fully admitted the existence of an infinite yet self-conscious Creator, we are not allowed to ground the irrationality of any other article of faith on arguments which would equally prove that to be the irrational which we had allowed to be real. Secondly, that whatever is deducible from the admission of a self-comprehending and creative spirit, may be legitimately used in proof of the possibility of any further mystery con cerning the divine nature. Possibilitatem, mysteri orum, (Trinitatis, &c.,) contra insultus Infidelium et Hereticorum a contradictionibus vindico; haud qui dem veritatem, quæ revelatione solo stabiliri possit, says LEIBNITZ, in a letter to his Duke. He then adds the following just and important remark: "In vain will tradition or texts of scripture be adduced in support of a doctrine, donec clava impossibilitatis et contradictionis e manibus horum Herculum extorta fuerit. For the heretic will still reply, that texts, the literal sense of which is not so much above as directly against all reason, must be understood figuratively, as Herod is a fox, &c." These principles I held, philosophically, while, in respect of revealed religion, I remained a zealous Unitarian. I considered the idea of the Trinity a fair scholastic inference from the being of God, as a creative intelligence; and that it was, therefore, entitled to the rank of an esoteric doctrine of natural religion. But seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of philosophy. The admission of the logos, as hypostasized, (i. e. neither a mere attribute or a personification,) in no respect removed my doubts concerning the incarnation and the redemption by the cross; which I could neither reconcile in reason with the impassiveness of the Divine Being, nor, in my moral feelings, with the sacred distinction between things and persons, the vicarious payment of a debt, and the vicarious expiation of guilt. A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart, were yet wanting. Nevertheless, I cannot doubt, that the difference of my metaphysical notions from those of Unitarians in general, contributed to my final re-conversion to the whole truth in Christ; even as, according to his own confession, the books of certain Platonic philosophers, (libri quorundam Platonicorum,) commenced the rescue of St. Augustine's faith from the same error, aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichean heresy. While my mind was thus perplexed, by a gracious Providence, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful, the generous and munificent patronage of Mr. JOSIAH, and Mr. THOMAS WEDGEWOOD, enabled me to finish my education in Germany. Instead of troubling others with my own crude notions and juvenile compositions, I was thenceforward better employed in attempting to store my own head with the wisdom of others. I made the best use of my time and means; and there is, therefore, no period of my life on which I can look back with such unmingled the most important remains of the THEOTISCAN, OF satisfaction. After acquiring a tolerable sufficiency the transitional state of the Teutonic language from in the German language* at Ratzeburg, which, with the Gothic to the old German of the Swabian period. my voyage and journey thither, I have described in Of this period (the polished dialect of which is analoTHE FRIEND, I proceeded through Hanover to Got-gous to that of our Chaucer, and which leaves the tingen. Here I regularly attended the lectures on physiology in the morning, and on natural history in the evening, under BLUMENBACH, a name as dear to every Englishman who has studied at that university, as it is venerable to men of science throughout Europe! Eichhorn's lectures on the New Testament were repeated to me from notes, by a student from Ratzeburg, a young man of sound learning and indefatigable industry; who is now, I believe, a professor of the oriental languages at Heidelberg. But my chief efforts were directed towards a grounded knowledge of the German language and literature. From professor TYCHSEN, I received as many lessons in the Gothic of Ulphilas as sufficed to make me acquainted with its grammar, and the radical words of most frequent occurrence; and with the occasional assistance of the same philosophical linguist, I read through OTTFRIED'st metrical paraphrase of the gospel, and To those who design to acquire the language of a country in the country itself, it may be useful if I mention the incalculable advantage which I derived from learning all the words that could possibly be so learnt, with the objects before me, and without the intermediation of the English. It was a regular part of my morning studies, for the first six weeks of my residence at Ratzeburg, to accompany the good and kind old pastor with whom I lived, from the cellar to the roof, through gardens, farm yards, &c., and to call every, the minutest thing, by its German name. Advertisements, farces, jest books, and the conversation of children while I was at play with them, contributed their share to more home-like acquaintance with the language than I could have acquired from works of polite literature alone, or even from polite society. There is a passage of hearty sound sense in Luther's German letter on interpretation, to the translation of which I shall prefix, for the sake of those who read the German, yet are not likely to have dipt often in the massive folios of this heroic reformer, the simple, sinewy, idiomatic words of the original: "Denn man muss nicht die Buchstaben in der Lateinischen Sprache fragen wie man soll Deutsch reden; sondern man muss die mutter in Hause, die Kinder auf den Gassen, den gemeinen Mann auf dem Markte, darum fragen: und denselbigen auf das Maul sehen wie sie reden, und darnach dollmetschen. So verstehen sie es denn, und merken dass man Deutsch mit ihnen redet."' TRANSLATION. For one must not ask the letters in the Latin tongue, how one ought to speak German; but one must ask the mother in the house, the children in the lanes and alleys, the common man in the market, concerning this; yea, and look at the moves of their mouths while they are talking, and thereafter interpret. They understand you then, and mark that one talks German with them. †This paraphrase, written about the time of Charlemagne, is by no means deficient in occasional passages of considerable poetic merit. There is a flow, and a tender enthusiasm in the following lines, (at the conclusion of Chapter V.) which even in the translation will not, I flatter myself, fail to interest the reader. Ottfried is describing the circumstances immediately following the birth of our Lord: She gave with joy her virgin breast; philosophic student in doubt, whether the language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibi lity, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness) I read with sedulous accuracy the MINNESINGER, (or singers of love, the provencal poets of the Swabian court,) and the metrical romances; and then labored through sufficient specimens of the master singers, their degenerate successors; not, however, without occasional pleasure from the rude yet interesting strains of HANS SACHS, the cobbler of Nuremberg. Of this man's genius, five folio volumes, with double columns, are extant in print, and nearly an equal number in manuscript; yet, the indefatigable bard takes care to inform his readers, that he neve made a shoe the less, but had virtuously reared a large family by the labor of his hands. In Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, &c. &c. we have instances of the close connection of poetic genius with the love of liberty and of genuine reformation. The moral sense at least will not be outraged, if I add to the list the name of this honest shoemaker; (a trade, by the bye, remarkable for the production of philosophers and poets.) His poem entitled the MORNING STAR, was the very first publication that appeared in praise and support of LUTHER; and an excellent hymn of Hans Sachs', which has been deservedly translated into almost all the European languages, was commonly sung in the Protestant churches, whenever the heroic reformer visited them. In Luther's own German writings, and eminently in his translation of the bible, the German language commenced. I mean the language, as it is at present written; that which is called the HIGH GERMAN, as contra-distinguished from the PLATT-TEUTSCH, the dialect of the flat or northern countries, and from the OBER-TEUTSCH, the language of the middle and Which the Saviour infant kiss'd; Hung o'er him with her looks of love, For us she bore the heavenly Lord! Most interesting is it to consider the effect, when the feelings are wrought above the natural pitch by the belief of something mysterious, while all the images are purely natural Then it is that religion and poetry strike deepest. southern Germany. The High German is indeed a lingua communis not actually the native language of any province, but the choice and fragrancy of all the dialects. From this cause it is at once the most copious and the most grammatical of all the European tongues. Within less than a century after Luther's death, the German was inundated with pedantic barbarisms. A few volumes of this period I read through from motives of curiosity; for it is not easy to imagine any thing more fantastic than the very appearance of their pages. Almost every third word is a Latin word, with a Germanized ending; the Latin portion being always printed in Roman letters, while in the last syllable the German character is retained. At length, about the year 1620, OPITZ arose, whose genius more nearly resembled that of Dryden than any other poet, who at present occurs to my recollection. In the opinion of LESSING, the most acute of critics, and of ADELUNG, the first of lexicographers, Opitz, and the Silesian poets, his followers, not only restored the language, but still remain the models of pure diction. A stranger has no vote on such a question; but after repeated perusals of the work, my feelings justified the verdict, and I seemed to have acquired from them a sort of tact for what is genuine in the style of later writers. Of the splendid era which commenced with Gellert, Klopstock, Ramler, Lessing, and their compeers, I need not speak. With the opportunities which I enjoyed, it would have been disgraceful not to have been familiar with their writings; and I have already said as much as the present biographical sketch requires concerning the German philosophers, whose works, for the greater part, I became acquainted with at a far later period. one object; the abandonment of the subsidizing policy, so far, at least, as neither to goad or bribe the con tinental courts into war, till the convictions of their subjects had rendered it a war of their own seeking; and above all, in their manly and generous reliance on the good sense of the English people, and on that loyalty which is linked to the very heart* of the na *Lord Grenville has lately re-asserted. (in the House of Lords,) the imminent danger of a revolution in the earlier part of the war against France. I doubt not that his Lordship is sincere; and it must be flattering to his feelings to believe it. But where are the evidences of the danger, to which a future historian can appeal? Or must he rest on an assertion? Let me be permitted to extract a passage on the subject from The Friend. "I have said that to withstand the arguments of the lawless, the anti jacobins proposed to suspend the law, and by the interposition of a particular statute, to eclipse the blessed light of the universal sun, that spies and informers might tyrannize and escape in the ominous darkness. Oh! if these mistaken men, intoxicated and bewildered with the panic of property, which they themselves were the chief agents in exciting, had ever lived in a country where there really existed a general disposition to change and rebellion! Had they ever travelled through Sicily; or through France at the first coming on of the Revolution; or even, alas! through too many of the provinces of a sister island, they could not but have shrunk from their own declarations concerning the state of feeling, an opinion at that time predominant throughout Great Britain. There was a time, (heaven grant that that time may have passed by !) when, by crossing a narrow strait, they might have learnt the true symptoms of approaching danger, and have secured themselves from mistaking the meetings and idle rant of such sedition, as shrunk appalled from the sight of a constable, for the dire murmuring and strange consternation which precedes the storm or earthquake of national discord. Not only in coffee-houses and public theatres, but even at the tables of the wealthy, they would have heard the advocates of existing government defend their cause in the language, and with the tone of men, who are conscious that they are in a minority. But in England, when the alarm was at its highest, there was not a city, no, not a town or village, in which a man suspected of holding democratic principles could move abroad without receiving some unpleasant proof of the hatred in which his supposed opinions were held by the great majority of the people; and the only instances of popular excess and indignation, were in favor of the government and the established church. But why need I appeal to these invidious facts? Turn over the pages of history, and seek for a single instance of a revo the nobles, or the ecclesiastics, or the moneyed classes, in any country in which the influences of property had ever been predominant, and where the interests of the proprietors were interlinked! Examine the revolution of the Belgic provinces under Philip 2d; the civil wars of France in the preceding generation; the history of the American revolution, or the yet more recent events in Sweden and in Spain; and it will be scarcely possible not to perceive, that in England, from 1791 to the peace of Amiens, there were neither tendencies to confederacy, nor actual confederacies, against which the existing laws had not provided sufficient safeguards and an ample punishment. But alas! the panic of property had been struck, in the first instance, for party purposes; and when it became general, its propagators caught it themselves, Soon after my return from Germany, I was solicited to undertake the literary and political department in the Morning Post; and I acceded to the proposal, on the condition that the paper should, thenceforward, be conducted on certain fixed and announced principles, and that I should be neither obliged or request-lution having been effected without the concurrence of either ed to deviate from them, in favor of any party or any event. In consequence, that Journal became, and for many years continued, anti-ministerial indeed; yet, with a very qualified approbation of the opposition, and with far greater earnestness and zeal, both anti-jacobin and anti-gallican. To this hour, I cannot find reason to approve of the first war, either in its commencement or its conduct. Nor can I understand with what reason, either Mr. Percival, (whom I am singular enough to regard as the best and wisest minister of this reign,) or the present administration, can be said to have pursued the plans of Mr. PITT. The love of their country, and perseverant hostility to French principles and French ambition are, indeed, honorable qualities, common to them and to their predecessors. But it appears to me as clear as the evidence of facts can render any question of history, that the successes of the Percival and of the existing ninistry, have been owing to their having pursued measures the direct contrary to Mr. Pitt's. Such, for instance, are the concentration of the national force to and ended in believing their own lie; even as our bulls in bellowing. The consequences were most injurious. Our attention was concentrated to a monster, which could not survive the convulsions in which it had been brought forth : even the enlightened Burke himself, too often talking and reasoning, as if a perpetual and organized anarchy had been a possible thing! Thus, while we were warring against French doctrines, we took little heed whether the menus, by which we attempted to overthrow them, were not likely to aid and augment the far more formidable evil of French ambition. Borrowdale sometimes run mad with the echo of their own Like children, we ran away from the yelping of a cur, and took shelter at the heels of a vicious war-horse." tion, by the system of credit, and the interdependence greater weight on the confirming fact, that an order of property. Be this as it may, I am persuaded that the Morning Post proved a far more useful ally to the government in its most important objects, in consequence of its being generally considered as moderately anti-ministerial, than if it had been the avowed eulogist of Mr. Pitt. (The few, whose curiosity or fancy should lead them to turn over the Journals of that date, may find a small proof of this in the frequent charges made by the Morning Chronicle, that such and such essays or leading paragraphs had been sent from the treasury.) The rapid and unusual increase in the sale of the Morning Post, is a sufficient pledge that genuine impartiality, with a respectable portion of literary talent, will secure the success of a newspaper, without the aid of party or ministerial patronage. But by impartiality I mean an honest and enlightened adherence to a code of intelligible principles, previously announced, and faithfully referred to, in support of every judgment on men and events; not indiscriminate abuse, not the indulgence of an editor's own malig. nant passions; and still less, if that be possible, a determination to make money by flattering the envy and cupidity, the vindictive restlessness and self-conceit of the half-witted vulgar; a determination almost fiendish, but which, I have been informed, has been boastfully avowed by one man, the most notorious of these mob-sycophants! From the commencement of the Addington administration to the present day, whatever I have written in the MORNING POST, or, (after that paper was transferred to other proprietors,) in the COURIER, has been in defence or furtherance of the measures of government. for my arrest was sent from Paris, from which danger I was rescued by the kindness of a noble Benedictine, and the gracious connivance of that good old man, the present Pope. For the late tyrant's vindictive appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally on a Duc D'Enghien,* and the writer of a newspaper paragraph. Like a true vulture,† Napoleon, with an eye not less telescopic, and with a taste equally coarse in his ravin, could descend from the most dazzling heights to pounce on the leveret in the brake, or even on the field mouse amid the grass. But I do derive a gratification from the knowledge, that my essays contributed to introduce the practice of placing the questions and events of the day in a moral point of view; in giving a dignity to particular measures, by tracing their policy or impolicy to permanent principles; and an interest to principles by the application of them to individual measures. In Mr. Burke's writings, indeed, the germs of almost all political truths may be found. But I dare assume to myself the merit of having first explicitly defined and analyzed the nature of Jacobinism; and that in distinguishing the jacobin from the republican, the democrat and the mere demagogue, I both rescued the word from remaining a mere term of abuse, and put on their guard many honest minds, who even in their heat of zeal against jacobinism, admitted or supported principles from which the worst parts of that system may be legitimately deduced. That these are not necessary practical results of such principles, we owe to that fortunate inconsequence of our nature, which permits the heart to rectify the errors of the understanding. The detailed examination of the consular government and its pretended constitution, and the proof given by me, that it was a consummate despotism in masquerade, extorted a recantation even from the Morning Chronicle, which had previously extolled this constitution as the perfection of a wise and regulated liberty. On every great occurrence, I endeavoured to discover in past history the event that most nearly resembled it. I procured, wherever it was possible, the contemporary historians, memorialists, and pamphleteers. Then fairly subtracting the points of difference from those of likeness, as the bal ance favored the former or the latter, I conjectured that the result would be the same or different. In the series of essays.‡ entitled, “a comparison of France under Napoleon with Rome under the first Cæsars," and in those which followed "on the probable final Things of this nature scarce survive the night That gives them birth; they perish in the sight, Cast by so far from after-life, that there Can scarcely aught be said, but that they were ! Cartwright's Prol. to the Royal Slave. Yet in these labors I employed, and, in the belief of partial friends, wasted, the prime and manhood of my intellect. Most assuredly, they added nothing to my fortune or my reputation. The industry of the week supplied the necessities of the week. From Government or the friends of Government I not only never received remuneration, or even expected it; but I was never honored with a single acknowledgment, or expression of satisfaction. Yet the retrospect is far from painful or matter of regret. I am not indeed silly enough to take, as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox's assertion, that the late war (I trust that the epithet is not pre- without recollecting the lines of Valerius Flaccus (Argonaut. maturely applied) was a war produced by the MORNING POST; or I should be proud to have the words inscribed on my tomb. As little do I regard the circumstance, that I was a specified object of Bonaparte's resentment during my residence in Italy, in consequence of those essays in the Morning Post, during the peace of Amiens. (Of this I was warned, directly, by Baron VON HUMBOLDT, the Prussian Plenipotentiary, who at that time was the minister of the Prussian court at Rome; and indirectly, through his secretary, Cardinal Fesch himself.) Nor do I lay any *I seldom think of the murder of this illustrious Prince Lib. 1. 30.) -Super ipsius ingens Instat fama viri, virtusque haud læta Tyranno; † Θηρᾷ δὲ καὶ τὸν χῆνα καὶ τὴν Δορκάδα, A small selection from the numerous articles furnished by me to the Morning Post and Courier, chiefly as they regarded the sources and effects of jacobinism, and the connection of certain systems of political economy with jacobinical despotism, will form part of The Friend," which I am now |